A Woke Thought Experiment

[Aqua Letifer]

Q: Fill in the blank in such a way that the woke crowd wouldn't rake you over the coals for having this as a banner: "BLACK LIVES CAN'T MATTER UNTIL _________ LIVES MATTER."

I'm convinced there's a solution.

Right now my best bet is AUTISTIC. I think a legit case could be made. Again, not in terms of reality, but by the very intersectional rules that progressives signal outwardly. Down's Syndrome too, maybe?

To put it another way: what group can you publicly care about more than black people that doesn't brand you as a complete and total racist?

[jon-nyc]

Nope.

Only ‘black trans lives’ or ‘black muslim lives’ would be allowed there.

[Aqua Letifer]

@jon-nyc said in A Woke Thought Experiment:

Nope.

Only ‘black trans lives’ or ‘black muslim lives’ would be allowed there.

But if you say black lives matter more than X, by their own logic, then X isn't important. It means they have no empathy for X whatsoever.

X can't be an empty set.

Palestinian?

[LuFins Dad]

@aqua-letifer said in A Woke Thought Experiment:

@jon-nyc said in A Woke Thought Experiment:

Nope.

Only ‘black trans lives’ or ‘black muslim lives’ would be allowed there.

But if you say black lives matter more than X, by their own logic, then X isn't important. It means they have no empathy for X whatsoever.

X can't be an empty set.

Palestinian?

Trans Palestinian.

[Copper]

"BLACK LIVES CAN'T MATTER UNTIL Donald Trump's LIFE MATTERS."

[Mik]

@lufins-dad Israel bombing their junk off doesn’t count.

[jon-nyc]

@aqua-letifer

You didn’t phrase it as ‘more than’, if you did your answer would be the null set.

The only ending you could add to the actual phrasing you used is a subset of blacks with more oppression Pokémon points.

[LuFins Dad]

Does Candace Owen’s life matter?

[jon-nyc]

@lufins-dad said in A Woke Thought Experiment:

Does Candace Owen’s life matter?

Not to me. She’s kind of a tool.

[Aqua Letifer]

@lufins-dad said in A Woke Thought Experiment:

@aqua-letifer said in A Woke Thought Experiment:

@jon-nyc said in A Woke Thought Experiment:

Nope.

Only ‘black trans lives’ or ‘black muslim lives’ would be allowed there.

But if you say black lives matter more than X, by their own logic, then X isn't important. It means they have no empathy for X whatsoever.

X can't be an empty set.

Palestinian?

Trans Palestinian.

I honestly think disabilities are the way to go.

1. It's a virtue-signaling curveball. The wokes haven't had time to round the wagons and craft a narrative about them yet.
2. And they never will. You might live in White America, but you've seen Denzel movies, know rap and blues music exists, have seen black athletes, etc. When's the last time you saw anyone with Down's Syndrome in the movies? On Spotify? In a Nike commercial? In a video game?
3. Which, ironically, makes the point legitimate. Disabled folks definitely have to put up with a more potent pile of bullshit. If they aren't completely ignored by the media, the job market and just folk on the street, they're the center of a massive public debate about whether they should be having sex. It's kinda fucked up.

I think you could make a case that even wokes couldn't manipulate.

[jon-nyc]

@aqua-letifer said in A Woke Thought Experiment:

I honestly think disabilities are the way to go.

Black disabled would fit this rubric:

The only ending you could add to the actual phrasing you used is a subset of blacks with more oppression Pokémon points.

[Aqua Letifer]

@jon-nyc said in A Woke Thought Experiment:

@aqua-letifer

You didn’t phrase it as ‘more than’, if you did your answer would be the null set.

The only ending you could add to the actual phrasing you used is a subset of blacks with more oppression Pokémon points.

I don't think so, at least in terms if public consensus.

You're telling me that, say, a Palestinian mother with a down's syndrome child would be labeled a racist fir having such a bumper sticker? I think she's get away with it.

[LuFins Dad]

See, if you push “Downs Syndrome Kids Lives Matter” people are going to assume it’s a Pro-Life agenda and not legitimate political and societal debate.

[Horace]

I've seen two Down's syndrome people cast in 'normal' roles recently. One was cast as a grade school lunch room bully, in a role written as if he was a typical brute with an adolescent version of toxic masculinity. No reference or so much as a nod to the Downs syndrome. I can't remember what movie that was, but I recognized the casting intention to 'normalize' people like that. The second one was in a show called Loudermilk, where the guy with Down's plays a wise guy con man.

[Aqua Letifer]

@lufins-dad said in A Woke Thought Experiment:

See, if you push “Downs Syndrome Kids Lives Matter” people are going to assume it’s a Pro-Life agenda and not legitimate political and societal debate.

No need to further isolate it by saying "kids," though.

[Aqua Letifer]

@horace said in A Woke Thought Experiment:

I've seen two Down's syndrome people cast in 'normal' roles recently. One was cast as a grade school lunch room bully, in a role written as if he was a typical brute with an adolescent version of toxic masculinity. No reference or so much as a nod to the Downs syndrome. I can't remember what movie that was, but I recognized the casting intention to 'normalize' people like that. The second one was in a show called Loudermilk, where the guy with Down's plays a wise guy con man.

That just further proves the point, though. Blind actors play blind characters, no problem. Same with deaf actors, actors in wheelchairs, etc., etc. Why make Down's Syndrome actors appear differently? Because we have no idea what the hell we're doing in terms of treating them fairly.

The thing is, we aren't comparing social justice apples to social justice apples. We're comparing a social justice narrative to a social taboo, which I don't think the woke community has had to grapple with.

And anyway, I think taboo wins out. Fear of the unknown > scripted outrage.

[Aqua Letifer]

Another fun one:

I was in an Arlington Starbucks a long while back, and a dude with Tourette's was sitting by himself. His primary tick was a racial slur. You could tell he was grappling with himself each time, but the harder he was trying to keep it in, the louder the next one was.

This was about 10 years or so ago. I'd absolutely love to know how he's getting on in public or at work these days. My guess is, he's one SJW-fueled HR complaint away from a discrimination windfall.

[Axtremus]

@aqua-letifer said in A Woke Thought Experiment:

I honestly think disabilities are the way to go.
…
I think you could make a case that even wokes couldn't manipulate.

No, the BLM movement stems from disproportionately more black people getting killed by law enforcement. To one-up that demographic subgroup on the BLM metric, you need to identify another demographic subgroup that gets killed even more disproportionately by law enforcement. Even if you argue that it’s just perception, you still need to find another subgroup that is perceived to have been killed by law enforcement more disproportionately than black people have been.

[jon-nyc]

@axtremus said in A Woke Thought Experiment:

No, the BLM movement stems from disproportionately more black people getting killed by law enforcement.

Proportionate to what?

[George K]

@jon-nyc said in A Woke Thought Experiment:

@axtremus said in A Woke Thought Experiment:

No, the BLM movement stems from disproportionately more black people getting killed by law enforcement.

Proportionate to what?

I think this is what Ax is referring to.

https://www.the-sun.com/entertainment/1417426/unarmed-black-people-killed-police-blm/

Of the 765 people killed by police in 2020, 28 percent of them have been black people - despite comprising only 13 percent of the US population.

Which conveniently ignores this

Writing for The Wall Street Journal last year, she asserted that the rate of black suspects shot fatally by the police is “a function of” how often they commit crime. Because they commit the majority of crime, they therefore have the most dealings with the police.

“In 2018, the latest year for which such data have been published, African-Americans made up 53% of known homicide offenders in the U.S. and commit[ed] about 60% of robberies, though they are 13% of the population,” she wrote.

Yet of the 996 fatal police shootings in 2018, only 209, or 21 percent, involved black suspects, meaning, according to Mac Donald, that the share of black suspects shot by the police was in fact “less than what the black crime rate would predict.”